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The original target for Java (Oak) was set top boxes. Arguably Sun was trying to commoditize the set top box industry so that they could sell expensive servers

by sulam 6y ago

The original target for Java (Oak) was set top boxes. Arguably Sun was trying to commoditize the set top box industry so that they could sell expensive servers to cable operators. Then someone decided to open source the result (engineers aren’t always great economists / financial analysts). Amusingly in the 25 years since, set top box manufacturers have commoditized themselves very effectively.

jen20 6y ago
> Then someone decided to open source the result The Sun JVM was open-sourced in 2006-2007 [1] - 10 years after the introduction of the platform and after it was already wildly popular. [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20140527220942/http://grnlight.net/index.php/programming-articles/115-javaone-sun-the-bulk-of-java-is-open-sourced https://web.archive.org/web/20140527220942/http://grnlight.n...